Ridges rose around them, Raksala-Ba saw a Pathfinder and wondered why he was sitting on a ledge. The bio bod gestured respect and vanished upwards. The ground rushed up to meet the cyborg, his wings fell away, and the real battle began.
Due to the fact that the Nooni was the only ship of her kind in-system, and didn’t exhibit the physical or electronic characteristics necessary to generate a high threat index, she had been largely ignored. But with the battle under control, and a clear numerical advantage, the Hudathans were free to engage secondary and tertiary targets. Targets such as the big, slow Colony-class ship, which, after sustaining more battle damage, had only limited mobility.
A pair of fighters made a run down the port side and Harmon felt the command chair shudder in response to the torpedo hits. The hull was thick, thank God, thicker than those provided to newer vessels, but far from invulnerable. Due to the fact that the Say’lynt habitat took up nearly 86 percent of the Nooni’s mass, the ship had 70 percent fewer airtight compartments than most vessels her size, and could be destroyed with a single well-placed shot.
The missile launchers promised by Chien-Chu had failed to materialize, which left Harmon and her crew with little more than some overworked energy cannons and some jury-rigged slug throwers. Still, the gun crews had destroyed a fighter fifteen minutes earlier, and were doing the best they could. A chief petty officer touched her arm. “Captain?”
Harmon snapped at him and immediately regretted it. “Yes, Chief? What do you want?”
The CPO had been in the Navy a long time and wasn’t about to be intimidated by a reservist. He had bushy eyebrows and peered out from under them. “An officer came in through the main airlock. He claims to be Vice Admiral Chien-Chu.”
Harmon sat up in her seat. “What? That’s impossible! Chien-Chu died when the Invictor exploded. No one could have survived.”
“A cyborg could,” the chief said evenly. “Although he had one helluva time catching up with us. The admiral requests permission to join you on the bridge.”
The Nooni shook as she absorbed the brunt of another attack. Orders were given and a steering engine went off line. “Permission granted,” Harmon said irritably. “Send a couple of marines. I know Chien-Chu personally, and if this jerk is an imposter, I’ll throw him in the brig.”
The Nooni didn’t have a brig, not a proper one anyway, and the chief had seen Chien-Chu on video, but saw no reason to mention that. He left the bridge, found Chien-Chu, and snapped to attention. “Permission granted, sir. Through that hatch, and up the ladder.”
The industrialist nodded and made his way to the bridge. Harmon recognized him and came to her feet. “Admiral Chien-Chu! It’s you!”
“None other,” Chien-Chu agreed calmly. “How are we doing? How many ships have the Say’lynt immobilized?”
Harmon shrugged helplessly. “None. I requested permission to launch a psychomotor attack on three different occasions and all of my requests were denied.”
Chien-Chu felt his nonexistent stomach knot with anger. “Who denied your requests?”
“Overall command has changed hands three times since the Invictor was destroyed. The flag shifted to a captain named Zimmer.”
Chien-Chu winced in response to the casualties and the person who had assumed command. Zimmer was elderly, ill, and by some accounts addicted to painkillers. In spite of the briefings he’d received regarding the Say‘lynt and their capabilities, he had assumed they were useless. The decision was obvious. “I’m assuming command. Get Zimmer on-com and tell him that the reports of my death were somewhat premature. Pass the word to the fleet. Order the Say’lynt to take control of as many Hudathan ships as they can hold for a sustained period of time. Execute.”
There is, Poseen-Ka concluded, something especially satisfying about a pleasure long delayed. The vast majority of his adult life had been spent fighting the humans, and now, as he passed out of his prime and into his latter years, victory was finally at hand. It felt right somehow, like the end of a well-told story, when all the pieces fit together.
Yes, he decided, the years of hardship and privation had been worth it. The battle was his. Even now the Death Dealer was cruising through what remained of the human fleet, throwing her considerable weight behind lesser vessels, while administering the occasional coup de grace. It was an excellent time to tour the ship and congratulate the crew.
The sector marshal released his harness, stood, and headed for the hatch. At that moment a powerful but invisible force took control of his body and froze it in place. He didn’t know it . . . but the marines had landed.
The battle began in darkness, as ghostly green blobs appeared in night-vision goggles, computers fed firing coordinates to hard-wired brains, weapons cycled to ready, and fingers rested on triggers.
Many, perhaps most officers would have been satisfied to hunker down within the perimeter and wait for the enemy to attack, but Booly went out to meet them. He had a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the Hudathan bombardment had blown a hole in the northernmost section of the minefield, providing the enemy with access to the interior fence. Of course some self-deploying crab mines and computer-controlled automatic weapons could have been used to at least partially close the gap. No, the real reason Booly took his company out was because he thought he could win. And why not? His troops knew the terrain better than the enemy, were used to the never-ending shifts from daylight to darkness, and were well trained. All of which meant that it was worth a try.
The wing-equipped cyborgs had been a surprise, but not a disastrous one, since they made wonderful targets, especially after they landed on the flat ground towards the north end of the valley, and were bunched together.
Booly smiled grimly as explosions strobed the darkness and a line of 155-mike-mike artillery rounds walked their way through the enemy lines. The legionnaire thought about being scared but didn’t have the time. There was too much to do. The first step was to have what remained of the minefield temporarily deactivated so that he and his company could pass through. Once outside he sent a second order and the explosives were rearmed.
All of the Trooper IIs were equipped to carry a bio bod on their backs, and Booly rode a Trooper II who insisted on the name Reaper, and seemed to enjoy his job. Not typical, but not uncommon, either, as there have always been those men and women who glory in the life-or-death nature of combat.
Gravel crunched under Reaper’s steel pods as the cyborg carried Booly forward. Heat radiated away from Reaper’s back and warmed the legionnaire’s chest. He found his mouth was dry, his knees were weak, and he had a sudden desire to urinate. He needed something to do, something to take his mind off the very real possibility of his own death, so he jacked into the T-2’s more powerful com system. The lack of unauthorized traffic pleased him. Radio discipline was important especially now. One of the SAM launchers had been destroyed during the orbital bombardment but three survived. They swiveled towards the east, steadied on a target, and fired together. He heard the whoosh of displaced air followed by a roar as twelve missiles accelerated away. The legionnaire resisted the temptation to look and thereby sacrifice his night vision. Booly blessed the artillery fire that passed overhead and dreaded the moment when it would end.
Raksala-Ba cursed the incoming artillery fire and prayed it would end soon. This was worse than training, worse than Jericho, and worse than his dreams. The ground shook under him, hot metal screamed through the air, and clods of dirt rained down on his back. Someone whimpered and a noncom took his name.
The good news, if the term had any real meaning in his present circumstances, was that the enemy had come out to meet them, and had little choice but to call off the fire mission or suffer the effects of it themselves. And while the humans were notoriously stupid, there was no reason to think they were that stupid, so the pounding would almost certainly end.
And end it did, so close to Raksala-Ba’s thought that he wondered if the two were somehow connected,
and dismissed the idea as superstitious nonsense. Orders entered his hard-wired brain. They were clear and concise. “The humans are approximately five hundred units forward of our position. The aggressor force consists of cyborgs reinforced with regular troops. We beat them before and we can do it again. Attack and show no mercy.”
Raksala-Ba stood, looked left and right, and saw his comrades do likewise. The sun had risen. Water vapor drifted away from their backs and dirt fell to the ground. The cyborgs looked like an army of corpses rising from their graves. They looked, Raksala-Ba thought, like the name they’d been given. He felt a sense of pride. The Regiment of the Living Dead had never lost a battle and would never lose a battle. The thought filled him with confidence and he followed the others into still-steaming shell craters.
“Corporal Waterfind here, Lieutenant . . . we’ve got three-zero, repeat three-zero geeks inside the wire, and they’re headed for—” A burst of machine-gun fire cut the legionnaire short and served to confirm his report.
Chrobuck wanted to scream “Where the hell did the sonsofbitches come from?” but managed to restrain herself. While Booly had led the rest of the company to meet the Hudathans she’d been left to defend the base, an assignment she had objected to and argued against. But there had been no escaping the calmly stated questions.
What if the counterattack failed? What if Booly was flanked? What if his force needed a line of retreat? Some sort of reserve was critical, and since Chrobuck was the only combat-experienced officer that he had, she was the obvious choice.
So it was Chrobuck, and not someone else, who had to cope with the fact that thirty Hudathan troopers had found their way in through the defenses and, based on information provided by multiple sensors, were busy attaching explosives to the number two launcher.
The temptation to focus on the wrong thing, i.e., how they had gotten through the bases’s defenses, rather than the right thing, i.e., how to kill them as quickly and efficiently as possible, was nearly overwhelming, but Chrobuck forced herself to do it. She grabbed her assault rifle, barged out of the security center, and pounded down the hall. She shouted orders into the boom mike as she ran.
“We have geeks inside the wire! I repeat, geeks inside the wire! Button up and watch your backs. Friendlies hitting the surface three from now. Reaction Force One will assemble at the top of shaft three . . . two will standby and await orders.”
A substantial portion of the reaction force crammed themselves into the elevator with her and were still donning their body armor, checking weapons, and running com checks as the platform rose towards the surface. Chrobuck found herself squeezed into a comer as cyber techs, com operators, and cooks crowded in around her.
The elevator came to a stop, the troops located towards the front of the platform burst through the doors, and Chrobuck followed. There was no way to know if the Hudathans were any good at monitoring the Legion’s communications, but they had tons of captured equipment, so it seemed safe to assume they knew how to use it. Chrobuck used hand signals to divide her troops into three fairly equal groups and sent them out towards launcher number two. She led the first squad herself and made contact within seconds.
Four Hudathans appeared from behind a sensor housing and opened fire. Slugs blew air into Chrobuck’s face. The longer they delayed the humans, the more time the demolitions team would have to finish their work. Chrobuck fired from the hip and saw a Hudathan collapse. A legionnaire screamed, grabbed her knee, and fell.
The second squad arrived and opened fire. The Hudathans staggered under a hail of bullets. They fell over backwards and landed in the bomb crater behind them. More troopers rose to take their places and Chrobuck felt bullets thud against her armor. She fell, made it to her feet, and stumbled forward. She remembered Jericho, remembered how it felt to die, and screamed into her microphone. The others heard, joined the primal scream, and followed her in.
Many of the humans staggered under the impact of massed automatic-weapons fire, and many of them died, but some made it to the crater’s rim and fired down into the troops below.
This was something that only a handful of veterans had faced before, an in-your-face infantry assault at close quarters, by troops who kept on coming. The Hudathans reeled under the force of the assault, broke, and ran. They didn’t get far. The legionnaires had no mercy for those who had sterilized entire planets. They fired until all of the enemy troopers were dead. Chrobuck had released an empty magazine, and was about to replace it when an explosion knocked her off her feet. Launcher number two was gone.
Sector Marshal Poseen-Ka struggled against the invisible bonds. They had held him captive for what? Two hours? Three? It seemed like an eternity. An eternity during which he’d seen the course of the battle change right in front of his eyes, because while the crew had been immobilized, the ship’s AI had continued to function, as had the holo tank.
Having sprung their surprise and immobilized one-third of the Hudathan fleet, the humans had followed up in the same way that Poseen-Ka would have, with an all-out attack on the unaffected ships. And in spite of the casualties suffered earlier, the Confederate forces had proved themselves more than a match for what remained of the sector marshal’s forces.
Slowly but surely, the humans had dissected his carriers and cauterized his cruisers, until that portion of the Hudathan navy held captive was stronger than the part that was free, an accomplishment enabled to some extent by Poseen-Ka’s own subordinates, who, afraid that they might make a mistake, did nothing at all.
Through it all Poseen-Ka struggled against the force that held him in place, focused his considerable will on breaking free, and felt a series of small, almost imperceptible loosenings. Loosenings that he had stretched, and stretched again, until he regained partial use of his arms and legs.
The Hudathan had been mystified at first, terrified by the new weapon the Confederacy had invented, until the truth had dawned. Back during the first war, as his fleet had swept across the mostly Human Empire, he had paused over a planet covered with water, occupied by creatures who used their minds to take control of a low-orbiting space ship.
General Norwood had been his prisoner then, and agreed to serve as a sort of go-between. And he, fool that he was, had spared the ocean-dwelling sentients, reasoning they could be killed later on, after the Academy of Scientists had studied them. But that, like all the mercies he had mistakenly indulged in over the years, had been an error. Some clever and resourceful mind had remembered the creatures, had seen their potential, and put them to use.
Poseen-Ka used his rage as a lever, applied it with all his might, and finally broke free. It still felt as though he was walking through gelatin, but he was free enough to move. It took every bit of strength he could muster to access the ship’s AI, and having done so, to request the coordinates of all ships that were capable of carrying a large quantity of water.
The computer produced three possibilities, and the sector marshal chose a strange, one-of-a-kind vessel as the most likely candidate. His choice was confirmed when further analysis showed the ship in question had become the nexus of fleet-wide communications.
With that accomplished, Poseen-Ka used brute strength to force his way through corridors full of eye-bulging manikins, down an empty lift tube, and into the ready room, where his space armor was stored. Zippers, seals, and closures, which should have been easy to operate, had been transformed into monsters that had minds of their own. It was as if they wanted him to lose, wanted to drain him of energy, although he couldn’t think why.
Finally, almost exhausted from the effort required to don his suit, the sector marshal made his way out through the lock and onto the flight deck. A senior crew chief stared at him, fought to break the unseen bonds, and flapped his arms up and down. The Sector Marshall wanted to help but feared that an attempt to do so would be unsuccessful, and consume what little energy he had left.
Poseen-Ka ignored the pilots and technicians who tracked him with their eyes, placed
one incredibly heavy foot in front of the other, and climbed the roll-away stairs. A pilot stood poised at the top and made grunting sounds. The sector marshal squeezed past. The trip from the lock to the control room lasted hours, or at least seemed to.
Then, having forced himself to remember controls he hadn’t touched in years, Poseen-Ka fired the shuttle’s engines, gave himself permission to launch, and blasted towards the steel-framed stars. The target lay somewhere up ahead. He would find the waterborne aliens and kill them.
Booly had assigned one Trooper II to supplement Chrobuck’s security forces. That left seven T-2s, two quads, and the single T-3 to tackle the best that the Hudathan cyborg corps could throw their way. They approached the enemy in what academy textbooks called “an open-U formation,” and the Naa referred to as “killer horns.”
The idea was to make contact with the Hudathan flanks first, while directing a withering fire up the center. With that in mind, three T-2s had been assigned to the left side, four had taken positions on the right, with O‘Neal and her analogs holding the center. A pair of quads, one located to O’Neal’s right, and one to her left, completed the formation.
Booly, along with the company’s bio bods, brought up the rear. They ran to keep up and paused every now and then to fire the shoulder-launched “borg killers” they’d been issued. The conflict was little more than a head-to-head winner-take-all display of brute strength with cyborgs on both sides playing key roles.
Raksala-Ba gave thanks that the artillery attack had stopped, zoomed through the smoke, and panned the advancing line. He felt a hollowness where his stomach had been. His legs whined rhythmically but seemed disconnected somehow.
Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle Page 35